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2003-04-29 || 11:28 p.m. || los angeles || there is a house in los angeles i visited once that is old and stately and very much haunted. it is boardgames on the wood floor and child ghosts with their own room and three different layers of lino in the kitchen. it is a cropped view of palm trees and telephone wires from the bathroom window and cigarette ends clustered in ash trays and wine glasses on the front porch. magic and old wallpaper and whispers from the couch after everyone has gone to sleep. one of the girls living there is enchanting and delicate like the most beautiful teacup, all ballet slippers and curled hair and movie star lipstick. i have come to think of los angeles as that house and all its inhabitants living and dead, perfect like tarnished jewelry you wouldn't want any other way. and there are other people that i think of in the same way: my butler grandfather who served famous wealthy people until he opened his own school of cooking and art of the table on wilshire boulevard, my b-movie grandmother perpetually in a white bikini and peroxide hairdo, my great grandmother katherine hand, whom i can only think of as cradling her head in her hand and reading from a book, like in the only photograph i can remember of her. guestbook || notes || archives || profile || photos || d-land |